Jnl Publ. Pol.

, , ,  Cambridge University Press

DOI: 10.1017/S0143814X05000255 Printed in the United Kingdom

Global-net for Global Movements? A Network of

Networks for a Movement of Movements

D O N A TELLA D E L L A PO R TA P o litic al S c i e n c e European

University Institute
LORENZO MOSCA P o litic a l S c ie nc e University of Florence

ABSTRACT
This article focuses on the use of Computer-Mediated Communication
by the movement for global justice, with special attention to the
organisations involved in the movement and its activists. We examined
data collected during two supranational protest events: the anti-G
protest in Genoa in July and the European Social Forum (ESF) in
Florence in November . In both cases, we have complemented an
analysis of the Genoa Social Forum and ESF websites with a survey of
activists, including questions about their use of the Internet. We then
examine hypotheses about changes new technologies introduce in
collective action. The Internet empowers social movements in: (a) purely
instrumental ways (an additional logistical resource for resource-poor
actors), (b) a protest function (direct expression of protest); (c) symboli-
cally (as a medium favouring identification processes in collective actors)
and (d) cognitively (informing and sensitising public opinion).

The Internet is often considered a symbol of globalisation, and a means

for disseminating ideas and moving capital at global level. As well as
globalisation, the Internet represents an opportunity, combined with a
challenge for social movements. Similarly to earlier technological inno-
vations (Tarrow , chap. ), it has broadened political communication
and made it easier. In terms of increased speed and range of communi-
cation, it gives the new movements what printing, the postal system,
the telephone, and fax represented for movements in the far and more
recent past. At the same time, however, it contains risks typical of new
technology, namely generating alienation by eliminating face-to-face
contact and increasing hierarchical power structures through centralising
control of complex technology. Both scholars and social movement
activists are aware of this complex blend of advantages and risks.
 Donatella della Porta and Lorenzo Mosca
Communication has always represented a strategic dilemma for social
movements. The mass media are a significant (often ephemeral) source
for attesting a movements existence: a movement lacking media cover-
age is, in the public eye, non-existent (Rucht a). Media-spawned
communication affects different people in different ways and this has
obliged social movements to seek communication strategies capable of
satisfying their own constituencies while increasing support and sym-
pathy within public opinion. In a comment still relevant today, Michael
Lipsky () pointed to the role of the media as selector of information
about protest, with violent protest often getting more attention but also
being stigmatised. Furthermore, the media are not only a projector, with
a greater or lesser degree of accuracy, of the protestors identity but also
a fundamental partner for their interactions (Neveau ).
Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) in particular, the
Internet gives social movements the possibility of spreading uncensored
messages, and of attempting to influence mass media. Social movements
have traditionally created their own communication media (including
publishing houses, journals and self-managed radio stations), which were,
however predominantly inward-oriented. The Internet has enormously
increased the potential for developing alternatives and making the border
between inward and outward-oriented communication much more
permeable. Indeed, CMC differs from the traditional media in that it
favours disintermediation: movements present themselves directly to
the general public with low costs especially facilitating resource-poor
actors. Some observers optimistically stress the capability of CMC to
create a new comprehensive, pluralistic arena for political communi-
cation open to social actors whose access to the traditional media is not
extensive or unfettered. The individualized identities typical of a
networked society discover creative forms of organisation through the
Internet (Castells ). Besides making communication easier, the
Internet also seems to have some effect on how movements structure
themselves by fostering loose ties and ideologically heterogeneous cam-
paigns (Bennett ). In fact, the Internet theoretically favours move-
ments with polycentric and non-hierarchical forms of organisation
(Gerlach ).
Nevertheless, even within social movements there is a growing concern
on the specific problems Computer-Mediated Communication raises:
from commercialisation and problems of reliability (Rucht b: )
to censorship and control. Many believe that Internet campaigns have
inherently weak mechanisms of information quality control, and the
Internet is a better medium for disseminating information and opinions
than for building trust, developing coherence and resolving controversies
(Clark and Themundo : ).
 Global-net for Global Movements?
Scholars also disagree about the effects of CMC in terms of empower-
ment of poorer people. While some stress a potential equalisation (e.g.
Myers ), others suggest instead either a neutral impact (Margolis and
Resnick ) or even further concentration of power (McChesney ).
Not only does CMC seem easier for the elite to use than for the masses,
but it also tends to reproduce hierarchy, developing vertical relations
instead of interactive, horizontal relationships (Rucht b: ). Online
activism could become a low-cost but also a low-effect substitute for
off-line protest (ibid: ).
In social movements, and in other fields too, only recently has
empirical research begun to produce more nuanced interpretations of the
effects of the Internet as a challenge and an opportunity. In particular,
empirical studies of social movements have singled out some specific
contributions that the Internet makes to the activities of these collective
actors. First of all, its purely instrumental use is helpful in the organi-
sation and the logistics of demonstrations, and as a means for different
groups to keep networked. Secondly, the Internet can also be a specific
means for the direct expression of dissent and protest. Thirdly, it has a
cognitive function, enabling information to be disseminated and public
opinion to be sensitised on issues scantily covered by mainstream media,
and also reinforce collective identities.
In this paper we will focus on these uses of CMC by the movement for
global justice (Andretta et al. , ; della Porta ), with special
attention to both the organisations involved in the movement and its
activists. The movement for global justice has been particularly interested
in the Internet as a means for transnational communication. The
emphasis the movement places on its global identity and transnational
aims, as well as on a networked organisational structure, and its
attention to the development of alternative knowledge, are all factors in
the high relevance the Internet has for the movement.
We shall examine data collected during two supranational protest
events: the anti-G protest in Genoa in July and the European
Social Forum (ESF) in Florence in November . In both cases, we
analysed the websites of the main organisations involved and inter-
viewed activists using semi-structured questionnaires. Both in Genoa and
Florence interviews took place in workshops, seminars and plenary
sections. We selected seminars and workshops according to the type
of proponent organisation environmentally-oriented, religion-based,
pacifist, feminist, unions, left-wing political parties, and anticapitalist
groupings. For the ESF, we also took into account the nationality of those
organisations, focusing especially on Italian, French, Spanish, German,
and English organisations. Interviewers were asked to distribute ques-
tionnaires at random. In Genoa we interviewed only Italian participants.
 Donatella della Porta and Lorenzo Mosca
A similar method was applied for the sampling in Florence, where
however we also included non-Italians: the questionnaires were indeed
translated into French, English, German and Spanish. In Genoa, we
collected questionnaires; in Florence, , questionnaires. From the
ESF full sample we excluded the Tuscans ( participants) because they
had a very different profile from other participants in terms of socio-
demographic dimensions (gender, age, education, social condition), by
virtue of their nearness to where the event was taking place Tuscans
needed in fact a lower degree of commitment. We will refer to the total
ESF sample when we will test hypotheses without referring to the
countries of origin. Of the total number of interviewees, , were
Italian, French, German, Spanish, British, and from
other countries. The different sizes of the country samples are propor-
tionate to the national presence at this international event. However, for
cross-national comparisons, we weighted the responses in order to
compensate for having oversampled the Italian population randomly
extracting a subsample of the Italian activists.
An analysis of the Genoa Social Forum and ESF websites and how
activists use the Internet allows us to develop hypotheses about how the
Internet is put to use. In the next part we shall discuss the purely
instrumental function of the Internet (stressed among others by Diani
), as an additional logistical resource for resource-poor actors. We
shall then analyse the use of the web as an instrument of protest (della
Porta ), the Internet being not only a tool to organise protest but also
a means for a new repertoire of collective action (Cardon and Granjon
). The next part will study the capability of the Net to have a
symbolic function (Freschi ), favouring identification processes.
Finally, we shall discuss the cognitive function of the Net, in particular its
potential for informing and sensitising public opinion on issues to which
the mass media give scanty coverage (Warkentin ).

Organising via the Internet

The Internet provides social movements with a cheap and fast means of
international communication which simplifies mobilisation and favours
highly flexible, loose organisational structures. The Internet becomes an
organisation force shaping both the relation among organisations and
in some cases, the organisations themselves (Bennett : ). CMC
facilitates internal and external communication, enabling the same
message to be sent contemporarily to hundreds of addresses, overcoming
barriers in space and time. Being horizontal, bi-directional and inter-
active (Bentivegna ), the Internet favours participatory organisational
processes (Warkentin ). Whenever the networked organisational
 Global-net for Global Movements?
structure of contemporary social movements reaches across international
borders, CMC makes it easier to transform sets of geographically
dispersed aggrieved individuals into a densely connected aggrieved
population, thus solving one key problem of mobilisation (Diani ).
Organisational structures can be shaped differently by CMC since, as
Smith (: ) writes, the advancement of communication and
transportation technologies has made more decentralized organizational
structures viable. According to Castells (: ) the Internet fits
with the basic features of the kind of social movements emerging in the
Information Age (. . .). The Internet is not simply a technology: it is a
communication media, and it is the material infrastructure of a given
organizational form: the network. As Naomi Klein (: ) observed,
the use of the Internet is shaping the movement on its own web-like
image, with hubs at the centre of activities, and the spokes that link to
other centers, which are autonomous but interconnected.
Most scholars agree that, at least in the short run, CMCs impact on
organisational structures would be highly varied: organisations with a
longer history would be more reluctant to adopt CMC or, even when
they do, they continue to use it similarly to the old media of communi-
cation without exploiting many of its more innovative aspects such as
interactivity. In fact, while newer, resource-poor organizations that tend
to reject conventional politics may be defined in important ways by their
Internet presence (Bennett : ), established organisations seem to
have a conservative approach toward CMC (Smith ). As Tarrow
(: ) argues the Internet as a form of movement communication
has had a more transformative effect on new movement organizations
than on established ones, which continue to rely more on face-to-face
communication and on conventional organisational channels of com-
munication. But we should also consider that some resources available
for richer organisations facilitate more effective use of the Internet as
some findings on political parties (Margolis and Resnick ) and NGOs
(Warkentin ) seem to point out.
Research on non-conventional and conventional political participation
has stressed that the organisation of supranational protest has very high
transaction costs which may go some way towards explaining why
protest remains at a national or even local level despite higher compe-
tencies at international level. However, the Internet has substantially
reduced the cost of communicating with large numbers of individuals
spread all around the globe. Already during the campaign against
land-mines, it was observed that The global web of electronic media,
including telecommunications, fax machines, and especially the Internet
and the World Wide Web, have played an unprecedented role in
facilitating a global network of concerned supporters around the issue
 Donatella della Porta and Lorenzo Mosca
(Price : ). In the last few years, the use of CMC has been crucial
in the organisational phases of very large, transnational demonstrations,
that have been staged with a frequency and number of participants
previously unheard of. CMC makes transnational mobilisation easier
whether in the form of a series of demonstrations going on at the same
time in different countries, as happened in the hundreds of demonstra-
tions against the war against Iraq on February th , or protest
events in one place with the participation of activists from different states
and continents, as was the case of the World Social Forum. Connected
rapidly and cheaply over the Net, networks of activists and an increasing
number of global organisations have worked together in Seattle, Genoa,
Porto Alegre, Florence, Paris and other places.
For the transnational meetings held in both Genoa and Florence, the
Internet played an important logistic function. The site of the Genoa
Social Forum (GSF), which coordinated the protest in Genoa, contained
a map of the city with meeting points, a calendar of the activities during
the days of the protest, some documents, press releases, information
material, and links to the various organisations that signed the working
agreement, the document containing the main rules and guidelines of
the Genoa protest that the organisations taking part committed them-
selves to respect. The international character of the movement was
manifest in its multi-language website: the most important documents
were available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and
Spanish.
Similarly, CMC made it possible for the organisers of the ESF to lower
considerably the costs of mobilisation by providing virtual visitors with
information on the genesis and objectives of the social forum, its official
program and its preparatory and conclusive documents. Visitors to the
website could register for the forum online and book a place to stay
during the ESF, many of which were offered free of charge by Florence
residents. An online forum was created to discuss and make decisions
on the official program: everyone could propose and organise, once
accepted, a specific workshop. The ESF website was used to recruit
volunteers for fund-raising and appeared in English, French, German,
Italian and Spanish.
Furthermore, the ESF website was particularly attentive to communi-
cating the content of the forum, and made a press area available with
news, press releases, press clippings and a press kit with the basics on the
ESF. Here activists and professional journalists created an open space
for exchanging information in which every type of material (documents,
texts, audio and video products) produced at and about the ESF could
be uploaded, downloaded and freely used and distributed, by-passing
copyright rules. There was also a constant and frequent link up
 Global-net for Global Movements?
through non-public mailing-list between the spokesmen of the main
organisational sectors.
The main networks of organisations involved in the Genoa and
Florence protest also had their own websites. The international platform
of ATTAC promotes diffusion to a global mailing-list of the interconti-
nental network because it assures a great speed of communication
and a notable saving of money. (. . .) it guarantees a big democratic
transparency in our communications (Vanier ). According to
Christophe Ventura, the person entrusted with international relations in
the French branch of the association, the creation of the ATTAC
associations out of France is a spontaneous phenomenon. In this sense,
our website has played an important role (in Ancelovici ). During
the organisation of the Genoa events, the website of Rete Lilliput (the
Italian ecopacifist network) was frequently updated with documents,
information, bibliographical references, articles written on particularly
successful initiatives held by local branches. It also contained links to the
associations who promote the network. Online petitions and campaigns
are frequently promoted and supported from this website too. The
network of anticapitalist organisations (http://www.ecn.org) also use the
Net extensively. During the anti-G protest, their website was particu-
larly rich and interactive, promoting and coordinating protests and
campaigns. Furthermore, the perception of the usefulness of the Net can
be seen also in the number of Italian squatters social centres that, despite
being present with their own pages on this website, have in addition
created their own specific domains. Genoa and Florence were nothing
new in this respect. Even before Seattle, organising supranational protest
was made easier by websites devoted to specific events, the majority of
which disappeared after the event, leaving behind a valuable archive.
CMC is a fundamental means of communication among activists of the
global justice movement: in Genoa, per cent of interviewees declared
that they used the Internet regularly; in Florence per cent declared
using it at least once a week, and almost half daily (Table ). Internet use
by activists does not reflect national differences in Internet rates of access
among selected European countries. As other research has already
indicated (Bedoyan et al. ), activists from abroad tended to make a
more frequent use of Internet than did locals.
While the Internet provides social movements with the means for
managing logistics, the extent to which it has a levelling effect among
social groups is still an open question. Reflecting on this, McChesney
() talks of a partial public sphere in cyberspace, access to the
Internet still being limited to an elite with high levels of education and
income, while female and older cohorts are less present. Indeed, the
Internet is the very cause of a new form of inequality: the digital divide.
 Donatella della Porta and Lorenzo Mosca
T : Use of the Internet by ESF participants country
Internet use Italy France Germany Spain UK Total
Daily % % % % % %
Many times a week % % % % % %
Once a week % % % % % %
Once a month % % % % % %
Never % % % % % %
Total cases: N () () () () () ()

Source: Our database on survey with ESF activists (balanced sub-sample).

Differences emerge in Internet access between different territorial levels,

not only rich regions versus poor ones but also between rich and poor
people in the wealthy nations, penalising those lacking economic and
cultural resources, and between social sectors with different degrees of
interest in politics, favouring groups of citizens already active and inter-
ested in politics (Norris ). It is significant that institutions of global
governance have recently put the issue of digital divide in their agenda.
Our data on ESF participants confirm that movements share a certain
degree of digital divide, but also point to the role played by the move-
ment organisations in socialising their members in the use of Internet. In
order to explain the differential use of the Internet by our activists, we
tested five hypotheses that we considered plausible:
(a) socio-demographic hypothesis the selectivity of Internet access
is linked to socio-demographic features such as gender, age,
education, income
(b) media consumption hypothesis people wanting information and
having the means to access it use a variety of different sources: thus
previous media consumption explains the use of the Internet
(c) organisational belonging hypothesis since social movement or-
ganisations can motivate marginal and disadvantaged subjects to
participate, present or past membership in social movements using
the Internet can play an important role in extending Internet
access and literacy
(d) participation hypothesis since CMC influences the possibility of
participation in politics (Hill and Hughes ), those who are
more politically committed will be motivated to use this new media
in order to enhance their participation: having taken part in a wide
repertoire of political activities encourages use of the Internet
(e) cosmopolitan identity hypothesis seeing oneself as belonging to
Europe or the world indicates a cosmopolitan mentality; encour-
aging Internet use to obtain information on other countries, and
contacts with people there.
 Global-net for Global Movements?
The effect of these sets of variables on CMC has been checked
empirically using a model of binary logistic regression (Table ). We
transformed use of the Internet into a dummy variable excluding the
three intermediate categories of the original five point scale. This
decision stems from previous analyses of the same database which
indicated clearly that the main difference in Internet use was between two
groups: non-users and daily users (Mosca ). The backwards stepwise
method confirmed the significant influence of socio-demographic vari-
ables: education, with a regression coefficient of .; age, with .; and
gender,
.. It also highlights the positive influence of listening to news
on the radio (regression coefficient .) and the negative impact of
disruptive forms of participation (
.). The most important variable in
the model, however, is familiarisation with new technologies, in particu-
lar, past or present use of CMC in organisations to which the interviewee
has belonged (regression coefficient .).
Since having used the Internet inside an organisation increases the
individual probability of making frequent use of it afterwards, this
suggests a general hypothesis: if CMC is used by the organisation an
individual belongs to, accessing the Internet tends to become an
important activity for previously unwired individuals. The organisation
makes its members familiar with new technologies. Socio-economic
centrality is not a satisfactory explanation not only for political partici-
pation in general (Pizzorno ), but also for participation in the

T : Activists Use Computer Mediated Communication

Regression coefficient
Use of the Internet (dummy) T statistic Sig.
(binary logistic regression model)
Socio-demographic variables:
Gender (woman = )
. *
Age (four categories) . **
Level of education (three categories) . ***
Media consumption
Listens to radio news ( degrees of frequency) . *
Organisational variables
Familiarisation with CMC in organisations to which
the interviewee belonged/belongs to (dummy) . ***
Participation variables
Disruptive forms of participation (additive)
. *
Constant
.
Cox and Snell R Square .
Nagelkerke R Square .

*=significant at the level; **=significant at the level; ***=significant at the level

Note: The variables were entered in the order presented in the table and a backwards stepwise
method applied.
 Donatella della Porta and Lorenzo Mosca
information society. This hypothesis is furthermore supported by other
studies that have already indicated that, for example, in developing
countries NGOs have made marginal social groups familiar with the
political use of the Internet. Information on protest in Chiapas spread
thanks to the technological support provided by a Mexican group of
NGOs (Cleaver , ; Castells ). An analysis of website links
points to the brokerage role played by the Zapatistas Global Support:
Zapatista-related sites are crucial to global NGO networks, and con-
tribute to binding them (Garrido and Halavis : ). NGOs have
also performed an important role in the creation of the first electronic
networks, which allowed social movements to become independent of
government support in their use of CMC (Stubbs ).
There is however no technologically-driven homogeneity in the use of
CMC. Different organisational sectors of the movement as well as their
activists make different uses of CMC. As shown in Table , if we cross
check ESF participants use of the Internet with their organisational
affiliation (eco-pacifism, anti-neoliberalism, anti-capitalism),, we find
that CMC is more used by organised activists than by non-organised
ones. This is particularly true for eco-pacifists and anti-neoliberalists,
while the pattern of Internet use by the anti-capitalists is more similar to
that of non-organised participants.
Almost all Internet users access alternative sources to obtain infor-
mation on what protest events a movement is organising and to get
immediate data on the contents, programme and logistics of the social
forum (see Figure ). Activists use CMC also to exchange opinions, and
to participate in online surveys and petitions. The online petition seems
to be the best known and most used protest tool of per cent of the
sample. The netstrike which will be examined in the next section is
much less present ( per cent). While those who use the traditional
media of press and television are more numerous, the role of the Internet
in political communication and mobilisation appears evident when one
considers that per cent of Internet users state that CMC influenced, at

T : Organisational sectors and frequency of use

Eco pacifism Anti neoliberalism Anti capitalism No affiliation Total
N = N = N = N = N =
(percentages)
Daily
More than once a week
Once a week
Once a month
Never

Source: Survey of ESF activists.

 Global-net for Global Movements?
F : Political use of the Internet by participants in Florence demonstration

Source: Survey of ESF activists

least a little, their decision to participate in the Genoa demonstration

(Andretta et al. ). Moreover, the political use of the Internet is more
frequent among activists who belong to the principal networks of the
movement.
Activists from different movement areas differ in the way they use
Internet. The anti-capitalists make less use of online surveys and petitions
and use the Internet mainly to find out about alternative websites ( per
cent) and gather information on protest organisations ( per cent).
Eco-pacifists log on to Internet for many reasons, particularly to take part
in online surveys and petitions and to express political opinions online,
a characteristic they share with anti-capitalists. More than a quarter
of eco-pacifists take part in net-strikes. The use of CMC by anti-
neoliberalists is very similar to the average, with a preference for online
surveys and petitions.

Protesting over the Internet

The Internet is also a means for protest and is exploited for online
mobilisation and acts of dissent, such as online petitions, website
defacement or cloning, netstrikes and mail-bombings. The term elec-
tronic advocacy refers to the use of high technology to influence the
decision-making process, or to the use of technology in an effort to
support policy-change efforts (Hick and McNutt : ). Most hackers
who log on to the Internet to participate in online protest belong to the
global justice movement, and raise specific issues such as free access to
information, in particular, free software and right to privacy (Castells
, chap. ; Freschi ; Jordan ).
 Donatella della Porta and Lorenzo Mosca
CMC has made it possible to conduct Internet transnational cam-
paigns against multinational corporations such as De Beers, Microsoft,
Monsanto and Nike, run especially via online petitions: some even talk of
dot-causes, (see Clark and Themundo ). International mobilisation
through online petitions has also denounced certain human rights
violations and put pressure on governments against the death penalty.
These campaigns grew to be longer, less centrally controlled, more
difficult to turn on and off, and forever changing in term of networks and
goals (Bennett ).
A tactic used by online activists is to create websites (with domain names
such as http://www.worldbunk.org or http://www.whirledbank.org)
that mock international organisations and their activities. Similarly,
fake websites are built using the names of international organisations
(e.g., http://www.gatt.org or http://www.seattlewto.org or http://
www.genoa-g.org) in order to attract users looking for the official
websites (Vegh ).
Another form of online protest netstrike proliferated in recent years
among radical organisations as a virtual practice for real conflicts
through StranoNetwork, (Freschi : ). Netstriking consists of a
large number of people connecting simultaneously to the same domain
at a prearranged time, in order to jam a site considered a symbolic
target, in order to make it impossible for other users to reach it. The
mobilisation and its motivation is normally communicated in advance
to the site against which the netstrike will be made. A netstrike is
comparable to a physical procession that occupies a road to make it
inaccessible (http://www.netstrike.it). When a netstrike is in progress,
online protestors activate a channel of communication, generally a
chat-line or a mailing-list, in order to coordinate their action of protest.
A netstrike was promoted against the WTO website during the protests
in Seattle, ideally linking offline and online environments (Jordan ).
Some groups prefer netstriking to online petitions because the latter
requires the construction of a database containing personal information,
which is considered a threat to privacy.
Similar to the netstrike, but less used, mail-bombing consists of sending
emails to a website or a server until it overloads and gets jammed. This
online form of action was criticised because its eventual success does
not depend on the force of the arguments but on the mere power of
computers and bandwidth available to the aggressor as compared with
that of the victim (Alfonso ). Mail-bombers are not easily identifiable
since they normally use special software to safeguard their privacy such
as cryptation, and keep their identity hidden.
Cyberprotest is promoted by the website of the Italian social centres
(http://www.ecn.org). The project of Islands in the Net successor to
 Global-net for Global Movements?
the European Counter-Network represents the virtual place for cohabi-
tation and meeting of most Italian social centres. In fact, it has favored
a great external visibility, but above all a great mutual knowledge
between the different local experiences of the movement (Freschi :
). It represents a sort of platform to coordinate mobilisation, support
protests and campaigns and allow people to exchange opinions.
During the Neapolitan protests against the UN Global Forum in
March , prior to the Genoa protest, some organisations promoted
netstrikes to challenge the forum. After some initial success, the website
that offered technical information for protesting online (http://
www.netstrike.it) was closed by the judiciary. The information on the
decision immediately spread within cyberspace and the website involved
was immediately cloned and reproduced on about ten servers in countries
that were not subject to Italian courts (Jordan ).
Our data on ESF participants show that the more a person is con-
nected to the Internet, the more s/he uses all the participatory possibili-
ties offered by CMC from consulting sites related to protest events
organisation and alternative information, to participation in online sur-
veys and petitions; from the expression of opinions to participation in
netstrikes. Kendalls Tau b varies from . for participation in net-
strikes to . for participation in online petition, all significant at the
level.
While online petitions, campaigns and netstrikes are often ignored by
those they are directed against (Rucht b), their impact on observers
depends on how much they capture the attention of the mass-media
(Gurak and Logie : ), leading to loss of face rather than loss of
money (Vegh ). Beyond the concrete effects, however, it has been
repeatedly observed that online activism can replace offline activism, thus
becoming just a simulacrum of real protest.
In order to test this hypothesis, we analysed to what extent online
forms of protest influenced offline activism. As our data show (Table )
offline and online protests are strongly related and tend to reinforce each
other. Sometimes they are used contemporaneously to heighten protest
visibility. More in particular, some online forms of action are correlated
with specific forms of offline protest: online petitioners are more likely to
be also offline petitioners and boycotters while netstrikers have a more
varied (mainly unconventional and radical) offline repertoire of action.

Internet and non-virtual identities

Cyberspace has been singled out as a promising setting for deliberative
forms of democracy. Scholars of social movements have underlined its
capacity to generate new identities. For example Park observed that not
 Donatella della Porta and Lorenzo Mosca
T : Correlations between online and oine forms of action
Online forms of action
Offline forms of action
(dummy variables) petition netstrike
(Kendalls Tau B)
Taken part in past demonstrations .* .
Squatting . .**
Taking part in elections .**
.**
Taking part in sit-ins .* .**
Perpetrating violence against property
. .**
Taking part in boycotts .** .**
Handing out leaflets .** .**
Taking part in strike action . .**
Attending political meetings .* .*
Occupying school/university
. .*
Canvassing for a political party .
.
Signing petitions/referendums .**
.
Party activism . .

Source: Survey with ESF activists.

only the formation of collective identity is easier due to the Internets

ability to put [together] people of similar grievances in disparate
geographical area, but also the diffusion of collective identity is faster and
easier (: ). Diani () claims CMCs contribution to the
collective identities of social movements is mainly in reinforcing existing
ones, while Freschi () studied how virtual communities can develop
an identifying function, creating social networks with internal solidarity
and common beliefs, acting online and offline. In fact, real community
can and does take root in Internet-based space (Gurak and Logie :
).
Our research indicates that CMC is conducive to making people think.
Online forums and mailing-lists favour discussion on specific topics (such
as logistics, forms of actions, agreements among organisations, slogans,
etc.) before a protest begins and, later on, collective reflection on
demonstrations among distant activists. Before the countersummit in
Genoa, the Internet provided occasions for dialogue within the move-
ment. Discussion forums and mailing-lists facilitated the emergence of
common interpretative schemes among activists and organisations. In
particular, the activists of Rete Lilliput (nonviolent Italian organisational
network; http://www.retelilliput.org) made an extensive use of the
Internet not only to spread information, but also to discuss themes of
interest internally (for instance, a list focused on the G countersummit),
through a national, regional and local system of newsletters and
mailing-lists.
 Global-net for Global Movements?
Local groups use mailing-lists to communicate between one (physical)
meeting and another. The website of Lilliput periodically activates
regional and national lists discussing issues that the organisation puts on
its agenda, allowing interaction between geographically distant subjects
in the discussion and in the preparation of events such as regional and
national meetings. Some weeks before the G summit in Genoa, the
Lilliput site had a chat-line which enabled synchronous discussions
between visitors. After Genoa, the website promoted online surveys
among its users to let them express their opinions about the GSF and
the forms of mobilisation to be adopted in particularly delicate protest
events.
Before the Genoa protest, the website of the Tute bianche (White
Overalls) (http://www.tutebianche.org) hosted a lively discussion forum
on which forms of action should be adopted in Genoa. Recalling the
Zapatistas experience of consulta (Cleaver ), they promoted a
referendum asking cyber-voters: (a) will you support disobedience to the
ban on demonstrations and the enclosure of forbidden areas? (b) do you
think that mass invasion of the forbidden area is a viable common
purpose? (c) do you agree that people need collective self-defence in order
to keep the police off, avoid man-to-man fights, degeneration, beating-
ups and mass arrests? The consultation was published in four languages
and received significant mass-media attention and coverage.
Their presence on the web enabled organisations of the GSF and the
ESF, including the more radical ones, to base their protest activity
against the G on transparency and publicity. From the analysis of
mailing-lists (Cristante ) included on their websites has emerged
opening and availability to debate, also with very different actors.
This leads us to another question, namely the type of identity fostered
by Internet. A broad range of empirical studies seems to indicate that
Internet users have richer social relationships (Hampton and Wellman
; Haythornthwaite a; Howard et al. ; Katz et al. ; Nie
; Muller ). According to one of these studies, online networks
often have their roots in offline ones, with a strong overlap between the
two environments and, furthermore, online communication services
allow broadening the network of social relations, providing access to
people and information, not only on a global level, but also in a
geographically smaller regional or local context (Muller , ). Accord-
ing to other empirical research, the Internet favors glocalization: it
increases the local contacts and the global ones (Hampton and Wellman
: ). Caroline Haythornthwaite (b) suggests that a medium
such as email can act as a diffuse, background contact mechanism,
connecting the very weakest of ties, and which requires little work by the
individual to access the social network. CMC can create connections
 Donatella della Porta and Lorenzo Mosca
between isolated, distant and unlinked networks, favouring collective
action toward a common goal.
In theory, the Internet fosters pluralist, open identities. If the Internet
multiplies the stock of social ties for each individual, allowing them to
activate a wide and variegated net of latent ties, transforming them
into weak ties (Granovetter ), we might expect a greater opening
towards the external environment from people using CMC and, accord-
ingly, a greater availability to identify with a broad range of collective
actors. Indeed the Internet enables contact to be made between individ-
uals completely unknown to each other when the knowledge is mediated
by the common affiliation to shared spaces for communication such as
newsgroups or mailing-lists or to maintain very weak ties through
irregular, occasional exchanges of messages. This process is enhanced
since in sharp contrast to telephoning, online messages are extremely
non-intrusive because receivers can retrieve, read, store (or delete) and
answer them at any chosen time (Geser ). Therefore CMC enables
the establishment and maintenance of a broader stock of latent ties that
can then be activated very quickly and used selectively according to each
situation and specific necessity. As research on peace activists in eight
nations indicated, the more individuals participate in multiple types of
organisations, the more frequently they use the Internet (Bennett et al.
). However, other researchers stress a sort of balkanization of the
web, with a tendency for web-users to only contact groups with an
ideology similar to their own. For instance, Sunstein () applied a
link-analysis to a random sample of political websites and found that
only per cent provided links to websites with different opinions while
almost per cent linked with websites of the same ideological orienta-
tion as themselves (: ). Furthermore, when a site publishes links to
a site that holds an opposing view it normally does so to criticise it.
We assessed the impact of CMC on identification processes at micro
level with the ESF survey data. In our model, we considered a broad set
of variables in order to point out the main causes for people identifying
with the movement, an organisational sector or a specific group. While
socio-demographic variables are not relevant, such processes are particu-
larly influenced by organisational belonging (although there is a high
percent of non-organised that have high level of identification with the
movement in general and with an organisational sector), by previous
participation in demonstration (that increases identification with a
movement sector), and by a cosmopolitan vision (identification with the
world). Media consumption can also play a role in identifying with a
social movement or an organisational sector. It is interesting to note, that
the Internet has an influence in the identification process with a specific
organisation (regression coefficient significant at the level), and an
 Global-net for Global Movements?
organisational sector (regression coefficient . significant at the
level), but not in the identification process with the movement in general.
Hence, if the Internet strengthens identification, this is especially true
under conditions of ideal or ideological proximity, such as in the case of
areas of the movement or specific organisation characterised by internal
homogeneity in regard to frames and forms of action. We also considered
that if the Internet tends to produce a higher trust in the movement, it
should also be positively correlated with multiple memberships which,
in general, has an important role to play in integrating different areas of
a movement (della Porta and Diani ), encouraging participation and
favouring mobilisation of resources, stimulating information exchange
and the adoption of convergent interpretative schemes. The processes
of exchange established on an interpersonal and inter-organisational
level have positive effects because it promotes cooperation and
diffusion of trust. In fact, in our data, the correlation between multiple
membership and use of the Internet is significant (Kendalls Tau B .
at the level).
Trust is often considered as easily spreading from one object to
another. In order to evaluate if the use of the Internet accounts for trust
in institutions and political actors, the data set is tested for the difference
in trust between the group of interviewees not using the Internet at
all and the group of interviewees who use it daily. The analysis was
carried out applying an approximate MannWhitney-U test. Our data
indicate that, if controlled by other variables (particularly education), the
use of the Internet does not explain trust in different institutions.

Spreading information
The Internet also has a cognitive function through information dissemina-
tion and gathering. A case often quoted is the Ejercito Zapatista de
Liberacion Nacional, that via the net attracted attention to a region of
the globe that was until then virtually unknown and to mobilisation that
the traditional mass-media had neglected. Online resource networks
facilitate organisation: they function as a common Internet getaway to
hundreds of NGOs; they offer them and individual activists Internet
based services; they provide established means for the affiliates to
communicate, and they serve as information resource sites for whoever is
interested. (Warkentin : ). Also, new media can influence the mass
media (Bennett : ).
Epistemic communities and advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink
) have communicated information on global issues they highlighted
the negative consequences of economic globalisation and pointed to
possible alternatives to neoliberalism. They encouraged the creation of
 Donatella della Porta and Lorenzo Mosca
the movement for global justice by providing alternative knowledge on
specific issues, as well as access and visibility on the web and linking
organisations acting in different parts of the globe. Beyond supra-national
protest events, long-lasting campaigns make use of the Internet: weblogs,
lists, and networked campaign sites create an epistemic community that
makes the campaign a source of knowledge about credible problems,
while making the target an example of both problems and solutions
(Bennett ).
Within the global justice movement, some organisations specialise in
the diffusion of information via the Internet. The Institute for Global
Communication (IGC), the Association for Progressive Communication
(APC) and Oneworld are online resource networks that operate as
Internet portals for a large number of NGOs. The IGC (http://
www.igc.org) is a network of networks, incorporating PeaceNet (pacifist
portal promoting the constructive resolution of conflicts), EcoNet (the
worlds first computer network dedicated to environmental preservation
and sustainability), WomensNet (portal advancing the interests of women
worldwide), and AntiRacismNet (platform providing information and
technical support for those interested in issues of civil rights, racism
and diversity related issues). LaborNet also originally part of the ICG,
and now with an autonomous network (http://www.labornet.org)
connects labour protest on the Internet. Another anti-neoliberal portal
focusing on the issue of labour and unemployment is the website of
Euromarches (http://www.euromarches.org) created in to mobilise
against unemployment, insecure jobs and poverty in Europe. As the site
specifies within this network, these organisations regularly exchange
information, experiences and reflections, defining what they have in
common; they elaborate common claims at the EU level and organise
together some actions at this level.
In , the IGC co-founded the APC (http://www.apc.org) in
partnership with six international organisations, creating an international
coalition operating in more than countries that includes affiliated
(wholly autonomous) members and partners. Since , the APC
have had consultative status to the United Nations Economic and
Social Council (ECOSOC). Its mission consists in empowering and sup-
porting organisations, social movements and individuals in and through
the Internet in order to contribute to equitable human development,
social justice, participatory political processes and environmental
sustainability.
OneWorld (http://www.oneworld.net/) claims to be the online
media gateway that most effectively informs a global audience
about human rights and sustainable development. It created themed
portals on AIDS (http://www.aidschannel.org), the knowledge divide
 Global-net for Global Movements?
(http://www.learningchannel.org), the digital divide (http://
www.digitalopportunity.org) and for counterinformation in general
(http://www.mediachannel.org). Besides OneWorld, there are lots of
networks that promote alternative and critical information such as the
French Samizdat (http://www.samizdat.net), the German Nadir (http://
www.nadir.org), the Italian ECN (http://www.ecn.org), and the Spanish
Nodo (http://www.nodo.org). For instance, Nodo is a server
hosting more than alternative and anticapitalist groups. It was
created in Spain in to provide virtual support to the campaign !
anos bastan! (Fifty years is enough) challenging the commemoration of
the th anniversary of the World Bank (WB) and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) (Bonet i Mart , Pastor ). Since then, it
continues a campaign of counterinformation to spread the real struggles
starting from cyberspace.
The better known alternative media is Indymedia (http://
www.indymedia.org) that defines itself in its homepage as a collective of
independent media organisations and hundreds of journalists offering
grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media
outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and impassioned truthtelling.
Indymedia is formed by more than fifty nodes all around the world.
The raison detre of the network is the critique of the established media
(Rucht b) and promotion of the democratization of information
and citizens media (Cardon and Granjon ). Open publishing
is an essential element of the Indymedia project that allows everybody
from independent journalists to unknown activists to publish the news
they gather instantaneously on a globally accessible website; since there
is no editorial board filtering information (Cristante ; Freschi
). Anyone who respects a few ground rules can create a local knot
of Indymedia. Indeed, besides global issue and counter information
on the main network, local knots of Indymedia have dedicated them-
selves to the coverage of specific mobilisations against neoliberal
globalisation; for instance, in June a demonstration against a
meeting of the World Bank in Barcelona (later cancelled) was the
occasion for the formation of a local knot of Indymedia. In the days of
Seattle protest, the Independent media centre claimed to have received
. million hits.
Due to its multi-media nature, CMC offers important tools to
organisations active on human rights violations, police repression and
environmental pollution. Anyone interested in knowing about any
harmful, unethical, or wasteful activities of companies or governments
can now locate websites that contain a constantly updated historical
record of transgressions against public interest (OBrien ). Web-
cams enabled activists to shame enterprises who contaminated the
 Donatella della Porta and Lorenzo Mosca
environment by discharging toxic liquid into rivers (Warkentin : ).
Police violence in Genoa was documented by video activists using their
cameras and spreading photos, images and films through the Internet. In
Florence, the activists organised marshalls armed with cameras.
In short, CMC creates easily accessible spaces in which any organi-
sation can, at a low cost, communicate interpretative schemes and
definitions of the situation which are alternative to the official ones spread
by the mass-media. CMC provides the movements with the opportunity
to create unmediated and unfiltered flows of information, addressing
public opinion and diversifying the message in accordance with their
specific target. Nevertheless cyberspace also seems to possess, at least
partially, hierarchies and gate-keepers of different types (Koopmans and
Zimmerman ). The visibility of websites is submitted to a series of
criterions and it rewards actors more gifted with resources that make
their presence in cyberspace felt through professionals who have more
knowledge of the rules that favour prominence on the Net.
Second, the fact that the Internet makes an enormous quantity of
information available does not automatically increase interest in politics
(Margolis and Resnick ). In this sense, there is a risk that the Internet
will merely turn out to be a new, additional resource for those already
involved in public life (Bimber : ). CMC would then be a new
resource for old activists and not getting new social sectors involved in
politics (Bentivegna ).
Thirdly, the development of the web changed the political functioning
of the Internet by heightening the problem of news verification (Gurak
and Logie : ; see also Lebert , on Amnesty International).
Rucht (b) rightly observes that information in cyberspace is unreli-
able because there are no obligatory checking procedures. Also because
of the highly temporary nature of the Internet itself, online information
tends to disappear whereas information on traditional media is usually
archived and accessible.
Fourthly, although CMC becomes increasingly a source of information
for the journalists of more traditional media (Cardon and Granjon ),
the capability of information to spread from the cyberspace to the more
traditional media is unclear. As Bennett () notes since Seattle, it
seems that a more familiar press pattern has emerged in both U.S. and
European media coverage of demonstrations: protesters have generically
been cast as violent and anarchists, and even equated with soccer
hooligans in some European accounts. According to a research on media
representation of the Genoa G summit (Vindrola ) during the days
of the meeting the three most important Italian television news dedicated
only per cent of the time spent on the summit to the counter-summit
agenda and per cent of that time to the agenda of the official meeting;
 Global-net for Global Movements?
most television coverage focused on security and public order ( per
cent) and the organisations of protest ( per cent); the police ( per cent)
and the black bloc ( per cent) had the highest level of visibility, while
the Genoa Social Forum got scant mention ( per cent). Similarly,
research on the press coverage by four of the most important Italian
newspapers before, after and during the summit indicated a low attention
to the content of the summit and of the protest ( per cent; of which per
cent was devoted to the official agenda of the protest). (See also Cristante
: ). In the coverage of the ESF (Cosi ), from October rd to
November rd only . per cent of the articles selected from the
three most important Italian newspapers gave coverage to the contents of
the social forum; and almost per cent in the alarm phase leading up
to the ESF were devoted to violence and public order. Studies on media
coverage of the movement for global justice in other European countries
show similar results: newspaper coverage of the Spanish EU presidency
was centred mainly on security and public order ( per cent) while .
per cent of articles covered alternative globalisation (Jimenez ); only
. per cent of German press coverage of five protest events in Seattle,
Prague, Genoa, Gothenburg and Berlin reported on the substantive
arguments of the institutional organisers and per cent those of
demonstrators while violence, police and security scored . per cent
(Rucht b). The passage from desktop to television screen (Bennett
) seems quite difficult.
Opinion polls indicate, however, that the movement on globalisation
had indeed a high capacity of agenda setting, turning attention to
globalisation processes and global issues. In countries like Italy, it was
able to attract support from a very wide base. The Internet is a source of
information for the activists, that work then as message amplifiers.

The network as a new resource for social movements

CMC has increasingly become a vitally important resource for those
social movements that have acquired heightened visibility in the public
sphere during recent years: the Internet has had, has and will continue to
have a meaningful effect on collective action. The Internet empowers a
series of fundamental functions of social movement organisations: it
modifies their movements organisational structure (more and more
networked, flexible and polycentric) and makes organising demonstra-
tions easier; it increases the possibilities for a direct intervention in
politics through different forms of cyberprotest, it influences identity
processes and helps to spread alternative information.
As for the organisational function, our data indicated that social move-
ment organisations made wide use of Internet for the preparation of the
 Donatella della Porta and Lorenzo Mosca
transnational protest against the G in Genoa and the European Social
Forum in Florence and that the activists who took part in these
demonstrations were also frequent cyberspace navigators. Different
sectors of the movement made different uses of Internet. While our
empirical analysis confirmed that, despite the diffusion of CMC, digital
access is still selective socio-demographic variables like gender, age,
education affect access, regularity and frequency of the use of Internet
social movement organisations tend to socialize their activists to the
Internet. Familiarisation with the new technologies on the part of
organisations has therefore an equalising effect, reducing the digital
divide. Besides, activists belonging to the organised sectors of the
movement are more likely to make further use of it as a tool for political
participation.
A lot of protest takes place online the most frequent acts are petitions,
but more disruptive forms such as net-strikes are also widespread. Our
data challenge pessimistic claims of a progressive substitution of offline
activism for online protest: activists perform their actions both offline
and online, using cyberspace as a new resource to increase their chances
of success. There is no sign that offline and online environments as
alternative to each other. Since they are more and more integrated and
overlapping, human activities such as protest also take place in both
environments.
The Internet facilitates the construction of new, flexible identities and it
operates as an intervening variable extending individual social relation-
ships by demolishing the space-time barriers. Indeed, it is the very
characteristics of cheapness and rapidity of the Internet that enable it to
accumulate a stock of latent ties that can be rapidly transformed into
qualitatively superior relationships producing a growth of the weak ties
and of the social networks in which an individual is embedded. CMC
multiplies the probabilities to keep this kind of tie active and, above all,
to reactivate it with ease and rapidity. The extension of individual social
relations via the Internet favours identification processes: the analysis of
the empirical data seems to point out a positive relationship between the
two variables.
As for its cognitive function, we noticed the movement for global justice
made wide use of the opportunities offered by the new media to create
unmediated flows of communication with their constituency and with
public opinion. Portals, websites and the independent media centres,
devote themselves to the production of alternative information, that is
communicated over the web. Although the Internet helps to spread
information with important agenda-setting effects, the passage from
micro to mass-media is problematic and social movement initiatives risk
being lost in cyberspace. Media coverage of protest events in particular
 Global-net for Global Movements?
tend to focus more on law and order problems than on substantive
proposals. Notwithstanding the bad coverage in the mass-media, a
series of surveys (see della Porta , chap. ) indicates that the
movement for global justice is successful in sensitising public opinion
on important issues related to the process of globalisation. Even if
the movement websites rarely get direct media coverage, it seems
the Internet plays a fundamental cognitive function in circumventing
mass-media.

NOTES
. Partial results of our research are published in Andretta, della Porta, Mosca and Reiter, and
. A previous version of this chapter was presented at the conference on Internet and
Governance, Oxford Internet Institute, January . We are grateful to the participants in
the conference, and in particular to Richard Rose, as well as to Massimiliano Andretta and Herbet
Reiter for useful comments. We also acknowledge the valuable assistance of Claudius Wagemann
with data analysis.
. To analyse websites no longer extant we used an online database that periodically downloads
websites and files them under different dates (http://www.archive.org).
. Although the distribution of most socio-demographic characteristics (education, age, and social
situation, such as whether student status or not) was significantly different between the Italian
sample and the overall population of Italy (likelihood ratio chi square test), the Italian sample was
not stratified for these conditions, because the distributions of some other countries also differed
from their respective national populations. Varying the Italian sample would have meant reducing
the Italian sample to a median category and foregoing variation. However, the gender distribution
was equal among all the other countries; only the Italian gender distribution deviated from this with
males dominating. Therefore, a stratified subsample was drawn from the Italian sample which
respected the equal distribution of men and women in the population. Furthermore, the Italian
sub-sample was reduced in numbers, since overrepresenting the Italians would have biased the
results and made some types of statistical analysis less applicable.
. Arabic, Greek and Russian translations were also advertised on the site but were never made
accessible to Internet users.
. The participants that declared affiliation to organisations participating in the ESF were considered
within organisational macro-sectors of the movement: eco-pacifism, anti-neoliberalism and
anti-capitalism (on the definition of these, see Andretta, della Porta, Mosca and Reiter ). The
category eco-pacifism includes environmental and pacifist groups, catholic associations, lay
volunteer organisations and NGOs; the category anti-neoliberalism covers ATTAC, trade unions,
the institutional leftwing parties and party youth organisations, student organisations of the
institutional leftwing; and the category anti-capitalism includes various kinds of squats (indepen-
dent social centres), White Overalls/Disobedient, radical unions, neo-communist organisations,
anarchist groups and autonomous organisations.
. Even though there is no law against it, participation in a netstrike is considered by some experts as
illegal. Netstrikers base the legality and legitimacy of this form of online protest on the right to strike
(Freschi ).
. Especially if attention is turned to such factors as the issues of debate, the degree of autonomy of
the setting, the technological applications used, the rules of discourse instituted and the type of
discussion management undertaken (Dahlberg ; see also Salter ).
. Among , respondents, the three questions were answered affirmatively by respectively . per
cent, . per cent and . per cent. It should be noted, however, that differently from the normal
practice in conducting online surveys, this enabled more than one vote to be cast from the same
PC.
. Latent ties are created on the Internet in asynchronous shared communicative spaces and they can
be activated by sending an email message. If the message stimulates an interactive relationship a
weak tie is activated (Haythornthwaite b).
. Models were tested using as dependent variables three dummy variables ( = none/a little/enough;
= a lot).
 Donatella della Porta and Lorenzo Mosca
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Department of Political and Social Sciences
European University Institute
Badia Fiesolana
Via dei Roccettini
I- San Domenico di Fiesole, Florence, Italy
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e-mail: donatella.dellaporta@iue.it

DISPO Department of Political and Social Sciences
University of Florence
Via delle Pandette,
I- Florence, Italy
tel: ; fax:
e-mail: mosca@achille.det.unifi.it